First day of school-- adult version

I've taken yet another small leap into adulthood and bought my first couch. My first couch was my college boyfriend's futon in the apartment we shared our last year of school, which was achingly uncomfortable. And really, it was his couch.

My next couch came in the form of a large, heavy, seemingly permanent monster of a sofa that came with the apartment. It was my first place in Toronto, I moved in with a friend and we had no couch of our own, so this leave-behind suited our needs. My cats tore it a new one, and we left it behind two years later.

My third couch I bought used off a friend of a friend. It was a blue Ikea Ektorp and I got it for a whopping $500, haggled down in the 11th hour from $600. Why so much? Because I'm a sucker. The friend paid $700 plus tax and delivery for it a year earlier. Having never bought anything so large off someone and too shy to haggle with someone I know, well... anyway, it was $500. This was in 2006.

Three years later, the couch is now sitting on the side of the road. The cats murdered it some time ago, in the large window of time when I didn't have a scratching post for them, and it stopped smelling right some time this year.

So now I have a spiffy new couch from Urban Brick. A real live grown-up couch that has never been owned before. It's got an ottoman, it's sectional AND it turns into a double bed.

I went shopping for this couch with two friends of mine, lovely men who both had an inner Rolodex in their heads of all the good furniture stores in the downtown core. One of them took a picture of me buying the couch ("First grown up couch") and put it on Facebook. I was charmed and felt like a kid going to their first day of school.

All that's left for this godforsaken move is packing up and throwing things away.

As for the old couch, it's still on the curb, missing a couple cushions we kept to sit on until we move. It's been drizzling rain and the old ratty thing is a pathetic sight. I'm somehow reminded of this commericial.

The catalyst of the couch

T-minus four days until I move and I'm nursing my anxieties with yogurt-covered almonds, at 220 calories and 15 grams of fat per nine pieces. I've eaten about half the container for breakfast this morning.

We all have our ways of convincing ourselves we're not really getting chubby. I've known of women who claim that since their breasts are large, they're really 10 pounds lighter. When I see my expanding waistline, I think to myself, "Goodness, I'm bloated." What other explanation can there be with all the chocolate I've been eating?

I'm thinking that all this moving is really bad for my health. I can't imagine why I continue to do this to myself. It's a really patient method of masochism. Every year I must cause myself some mental pain, uproot, readjust and try again. My dad constantly moved around. As a kid when I'd go to visit him, every year or two he'd be somewhere else. In contrast, I lived in the same house from practically birth to 16 years old. In this respect, I suppose I'm just as much a vagabond as my father. With my mother's taste in furniture.

The Dude is painting right now. He's insisted I go to a friend's party tonight as I'm too tightly wound to help. He might be right. I had a small panic attack coming home from Sears after being shut down by the Sears guy. All I wanted was a couch that could fit up a narrow stairway. In a neutral colour. Maybe something that could be taken apart. All he'd do was shake his head no at me.

And walking home, my world suddenly consisted only of this absence of a suitable couch and I got home, laid down on my stomach and laughed and cried. If this were a scene in an indie movie, the audience would know it's not just about the couch, but a symptom of a larger psychological working of the mind and the couch and unhelpful Sears man were only the catalyst for this maniacal laughter and tears, which had been held in over other matters, which had been repressed over an indeterminable amount of time.

But it's not an indie movie and the Dude had no idea what to do with me. So he made me spaghetti, put on some Entourage and worked out some kinks in my shoulders. When I was sensible he more or less banned me from painting today.

I could use the break from worrying. And my friend always has cupcakes at his parties.